The captive cultivation of amphibians, such as frogs, requires devices, methods and systems specialized to particular needs and phenomenon of the animals being raised. In that most amphibians require frequent contact with water, the presence of ample water, often for immersion, in a cultivation system can lead to problems in other aspects of the cultivation system. For instance, cultivation containers maintain a small pool of standing water for frogs. The frogs periodically enter and leave the pool, and upon leaving track water across the floor of the habitat container. These wet frogs may stand on or walk across feed particles, thereby wetting, breaking, and dispersing the feed throughout the container. This results in fouling of the container and lowering of feed conversion efficiency. Thus, the substitution of processed feeds for live feeds can lead to problems such as feed spoilage, non-utilization of feed, and disease, as when most of the feed is not eaten and/or when spoiled feed is not timely removed.
Particularly in the case of frogs, development and utilization of effective feeding systems can promote high growth rates and feeding efficiency while reducing feed loss, feed spoilage, and the chance of disease outbreaks. Various approaches to feeding frogs held in a wall-enclosed container have been attempted. For example, some in the art have blended live fly larvae with dry feed pellets in a feeding area on the bottom of a container housing frogs. The movement of the fly larvae attracts the frogs and stimulates feeding. Both the dry feed pellets and the fly larvae are consumed. While this system can be effective at encouraging frogs to consume dry feed, the need to continuously culture flies to obtain fly larvae for this approach adds to the costs and efforts to raise the frogs. Also, there is added risk of relying on live feed. If a large frog raising operation depends upon fly larvae for effective feed utilization and the fly culture operation experiences a crash, then the frog raising operation suffers substantially.
Other approaches have been advanced to get frogs to eat non-living feeds in captive environments. These efforts are directed in various ways to overcome the frogs' reluctance to eat non-moving, artificial feeds such as pellets or ground feed particles. Among these approaches are those described in the following U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,347,808; 4,038,947; 5,873,327; and 6,341,577. All patents, all patent applications, all patent publications, and all other publications cited herein are incorporated by reference to the same extent as if each individual publication or patent application was specifically and individually set forth in its entirety, and are particularly incorporated by reference for the relevant teachings disclosed herein.
However, for one or another reason the approaches known in the art have not proved consistently effective over long periods the culture for large numbers of containerized frogs. Among the reasons are fouling of moving parts, accumulation of overly moist feed, and the need for ongoing adjustment of mechanical linkages. Thus, there is a need for effective methods, devices and systems for use in feeding frogs and other, similarly behaving amphibians in captive cultivation vessels.